Is play the missing piece in today’s educational puzzle? That’s the question we wrestled with during a three-part book study I hosted this summer with early educators from across North America. Together, we unpacked key themes from my new book, Not Just Cute: How Powerful Play Drives Development in Early Childhood—and now I’ve pulled the highlights into this one-hour recap just for you.
In this episode, you’ll hear why I wrote the book, the research that shows how play fuels learning and brain development, and the very real risks when we push play aside. You’ll also catch some of the “aha” moments and practical takeaways that came straight from our discussions.
Whether you’re a teacher, leader, or parent, this episode is a reminder of just how powerful play can be—and why it’s worth protecting in every classroom and every childhood.
You can now also find Not Just Cute: The Podcast on Spotify and Amazon Music!
Notes from the Show:
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Transcript
This transcript was created with Podium.
Highlights:
(00:00) – Powerful Play in Early Childhood Education
(02:16) – Administrator Involvement in Early Childhood
(07:58) – Whole Child Development
(11:26) – Understanding the Spectrum of Play
(20:02) – Importance of Human Development and Play
(20:33) – Play for Mental Health Importance
(24:19) – Personal Play for Mental Health
(28:13) – Play and Soft Skills Power
(31:55) – Importance of Developing Soft Skills
(35:50) – Important Differences Between AI and Children
(42:18) – Advocating for Play in Education
(47:57) – The Role of Play in Education
(51:42) – Misconceptions Around the Concept of Rigor
(55:17) – Play as Essential for All Children
Transcript
00:00 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Hi, I’m Amanda Morgan, and this is Not Just Cute the podcast where we discuss all kinds of topics to help bridge the gap that exists between what we know and what we do in early childhood education. We’re starting conversations with academics, authors, decision makers, educators and parents so that together we can improve the quality of early childhood education while at the same time, protecting and respecting the childhood experience. I’m sharing something a little bit different with you today. This past summer, I hosted a three-part book study for my new book Not Just Cute How Powerful Play Drives Development in Early Childhood. Over the course of three separate meetings over three weeks, we explored big ideas, answered questions and talked about how to put these concepts into practice. Now, I know not everyone could join us live or maybe you did and you’d love a refresher so I’ve pulled together a one-hour summary highlighting some of the best moments from those discussions. Think of it as a highlight reel. The key insights, favorite aha moments and practical takeaways all in one place. You can find this episode’s show notes, which are always full of links, tidbits and resources, at notjustcutecom. Forward slash podcast. Forward slash episode 81. Before we jump in, I want to make sure that you know about a free companion resource. If you head over to notjustcutecom forward slash book that’s B-O-O-K you can sign up to get this same content in video format and also grab printable study guides for each of the three sessions that we discussed. You’ll also find information about team discounts if you’d like to order books for your group. Implementing your own team book study with these tools is a great way to spark conversations and keep the learning going. If you want to inspire deep reflection and important discussions with your team and know how to take practical steps towards playful, high-quality learning, this episode is for you. Let’s jump in.
02:16
A lot of the reason for writing the book was it really contains a lot of the things that I share when I present. There’s not a ton of new information there. There’s a few things that I did a little bit differently than I’ve done in my presentations, but so often when I do a training session or a keynote, one of the more common comments I get well, one of two things. One is I wish that I could say it the way that you just did. Right, that was so much information. I already believe it. I just wish that I could say it that way to someone else. And two this one.
02:48
I get a lot on evaluations or feedback from people where they say I really enjoyed your session, I wish that our administrators had been there, and that’s one of the pieces of feedback I often give to conference organizers If you can, please invite your superintendent, please invite your administrators, because this is information that they should know, but also because their teachers should know that they care about what they’re doing in early childhood and sometimes they feel like there’s a divide. I have been lucky enough to be to some schools where the superintendent is at the early childhood professional development day and the difference there is really amazing. They know that they care about what’s going on in those early childhood rooms and that it matters and that we’re not just again throwing glorifying birthday parties, but that it’s really important work. And so, with those two comments one saying I wish I could say it and two people saying I wish my administrators heard what you just said but they weren’t here.
03:44
So I wanted to take the information that I was sharing and put it into a book that people could access really easily. I wanted it intentionally. I made it really brief, I made it a really easy read. So the language I tried to keep it very conversational the way that I would talk to people, not the way that I would write academically so much.
04:05
I wanted it to be conversational, easy to read but also easy to pass along to somebody else so somebody who said I wish I could have explained it that way to my co-teacher can now just hand this to their co-teacher.
04:15
Or if they said I wish my administrator had been here, they could hand it to their administrator. And so to do that, I wanted two sides of that. Like I said, I wanted it to be conversational, easy to read, short, it’s not overwhelming. And on the flip side, I wanted it to have all of the academic and research depth to it, and so that’s why it’s full of footnotes, because I wanted people to be able to do the research themselves if they wanted. So dive into one of those footnotes and study the article that’s there. I wanted it to have that rigor that said you know that the article or the chapter doesn’t just say there are studies that show, but it says these are the studies, here are the studies that show. Because I think it’s too easy to say that studies show something and we just kind of assume that they do and we never really look it up. So I wanted people to be able to find it themselves, to deepen their own study. But I also wanted, again, to be able to hand it to your most skeptical parent, your most skeptical administrator, and that they would know hey, the studies are all here, it’s not somebody just saying what they feel is true. This is what some of our best researchers are handing us and we would be really stupid not to listen, not to use it, because it’s based in research. So I wanted it to have both of those things to be accessible, to be conversational, to be easy to read, but to have academic depth to it at the same time. So that was my goal and part of my why.
05:44
I think that was one of the biggest challenges. As I was writing that, sometimes I would think, oh, I should also explain this or I should talk about that, and my mantra I just kept coming back to this has to be brief, this has to be focused, it has to be short, and so I really tried to keep focused on just the main message that the why of play, why it really matters framed around kind of a narrative of what do we know from the research, what are we doing and how could we do better. I like that. Sharon said it’d be stupid to ignore the research and also negligent, and I think that’s really a powerful and true word. Right, why would we be negligent in our duties to serve young children. Why wouldn’t we use the best information that we have at our disposal? So, like I said, that was one of the biggest challenges was to keep it brief and to not go onto other topics or onto other subjects or elements that I find really important, but to keep it really streamlined and really focused, keep it really short. A lot of the information that’s in it comes from my Powerful Play Foundation’s professional development course that I have, and so that course actually is probably three or four times the amount of information that’s in here, and so I had to cherry pick, like how far do I go and how deep can I take what I like to say? When I’m kind of giving my full professional development, it’s like a five or six hour course with additional extensions, and I had to pull back from that and say how would I keep it really streamlined and focused and cherry pick that information?
07:16
Janice, I like that you called it educational malpractice. When we ignore the best research, it is it’s educational malpractice. Right and much like we would think. Why would a doctor or any other professional ignore what is best practice, ignore what is known to serve the people they’re serving, and if we just ignore that it is. It’s malpractice that’s the definition of malpractice to poorly perform our profession, especially when we know how to do it better, when we know what serves children better. Yeah, rescuing classrooms from the narrow focus Joe mentioned and I love that Joe says she’s at that same place trying to rescue classrooms from a very narrow focus to widen it and look at what does. What do we actually know about whole child development? And that’s where we’re at with this difference between. I say all the time I have to believe that there’s nobody out there saying I just hope that I could mess up as many kids as possible. I don’t think any policymaker gets up and said how can I ruin childhood? Like that’s the legacy I want to have for myself. So I just.
08:17
I can’t believe that anybody feels that way. There may be levels of apathy, there may be levels of priorities, but I just don’t think anybody consciously chooses to do poorly by children. But I do think that there are people with good intentions and bad information. I think there are some of these programs that people are implementing and creating because they really do think that it’ll help children get ahead and they just don’t have the right information that tells them what’s the research actually say about that, that that somebody just pulls from their own experience saying you know, I used flashcards and worksheets and often when they’re remembering that, they’re remembering, like college, that that’s how they learned, that’s how they studied. So, yeah, why not? Why I really think that’s going to help, rather than looking at the research or talking to the experts who would say, yeah, actually that’s not effective, especially for our three and four-year-olds. So again, I don’t think people intentionally choose not to serve our children well, but I do think a lot of people maybe choose to be ignorant about it or unintentionally choose to be ignorant about it, and so that was another reason for this book, that I just wanted people to be able to hand it to somebody and say, hey, I know you want to do what’s best for our children. Here’s some information that will help you do that that if we come from that position like I said, I’m kind of jumping around in section or chapter two that people don’t value what they don’t understand and so if I start with that belief that I believe people want what’s best for children and that there’s just something they don’t understand, then I can share that information and just believe that they’re going to want to do what’s best for our children. I know the reality gets more complicated and convoluted, but at the core I think that if we can connect good people with good information, then we see the transformations that we need for our young children.
10:05
Janelle says I’ve grown in articulating the value of play and the learning that is happening naturally in play. I love that, janelle, and I think that’s a really important piece. That’s a lot of the work that I do is trying to help people to articulate it to others that it’s extremely valuable for us to incorporate play, to support play, to be doing all these things for young children. But I don’t think we can estimate, we can emphasize enough how important it is that we communicate and articulate to others, because that’s what brings more value and more support. So if you can grow in articulating not just doing the practice but also the confidence and the skills that it takes to articulate it to others, then you’re articulating it to your co-teachers so they’re able to do a better job as well. You’re able to articulate it to parents so that they not only value what you’re doing more, but they’re able to support it at home as well and to learn from you and to transfer that. If you can better articulate it to your administrators, then they are going to support you better. They’re less likely to be saying, hey, move your blocks out, we need to do more, something else, right, but they’re also going to encourage others. Hopefully that it’s going to grow that movement and that momentum supporting play, so that it’s not just one silo of a great classroom but that it can grow into a great program that’s supporting play and benefiting all of the children.
11:26
Joe says this is now my favorite quote play is our brain’s favorite way of learning. And that’s from Diane Ackerman. That’s a great quote. People can copy and put that in your notes as well. Okay, so this was an aha for me, and I’ve had comments from people that couldn’t be here live or from people when I’ve taught sessions. This was a huge eye-opener for me and I think it’s a game changer for a lot of people that when we’re talking about play, we talk about the definitions, we talk about joy and agency and that’s helpful. But this from Jennifer Zosh, kathy Hirsch-Pasek and several other researchers this was just an eye-opener for me because I wrestled with these arguments.
12:05
I see online where some people will say, well, if adults are involved at all, it’s no longer play. Or if you’re bringing in any developmental objectives, it’s no longer play, and it just didn’t sit right for me. I also wrestled with like, well, what about, you know, circle time? Or what about all these other activities that are not free play? But I still feel like they were valuable and I still feel like children responded to them. Well, and I was just kind of trying to find that right balance when I came across this article that talks about this spectrum of play, this playful learning spectrum, and to me it was this like suddenly everything fell into place, so recognizing that there is this full spectrum of playful approaches and that, of course, free play is so valuable.
12:48
But even within free play, there is a spectrum inside that box. So I always argue that the very purest form of free play is probably not happening in your program, because that would imply that you didn’t prepare the environment, that would imply that you didn’t create any invitations. And so the purest free play, I always say, is like Sandlot baseball, where the children get together, they grab the materials, they all meet up, they run it themselves, they’re doing everything themselves. There are no adults even present. So Sandlot baseball is absolutely free free play. It does have some rules and direction from just the game of baseball, but there are no adults there to tell them what it is or to guide it. Right.
13:28
But in our programs even the free play is a little further within that box towards guided play, because guided play includes preparing the environment, bringing in materials or removing materials that are becoming a problem, that our roles in our programs are generally to guide the play, and that doesn’t mean being heavy handed or co-opting the play, and we’ll talk about that in a second. But watching and being responsive is part of what it means to guide play and then also room for things like games and playful instruction, so that even in our circle times we can have a playful approach and include agency and joy. We just don’t want the whole day to look like that direct instruction or whole group instruction, because we know that there’s only small slivers where we should be using that. So when we talk about this playful learning, everything within that spectrum should fit these definers as well. I think these are great definitions of play that it’s active, engaging, meaningful, social, iterative and joyful, and that’s another place where that joy piece comes from. That I just couldn’t have a definition of play without joy, but all these other aspects as well. That it’s relationship bound right, and that it’s led by the children and they are engaged and it means something to them.
14:38
But when we talk about creating that support, one of the big questions that often comes up is are we interacting, are we interrupting the play, are we co-opting and taking over, and so again, this is something you could spend a lot more time talking about, but in the little bit of time that we have two things I like to keep in mind and that I like to teach when I go to programs. One is that if we think about this question interacting or interrupting if we do, actually, this is one of those places I think it is helpful to think from our adult perspective for just a second and say you know, if I’m at a party or something, I’m surrounded by friends. If I just walk up to a group of friends who are already in a conversation and start talking about what I want to talk about, that is definitely an interruption, right? That’s not how we get into conversation. If I have a group of friends who are already talking, I’m going to walk up to them, I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, I’m going to pay attention to what they’re already talking about and then I’m going to decide is there an opening for me to join this conversation or is this a good time for me to step back and go find another conversation? And so the same is true with play. If I just plop myself down by children who are playing and I immediately jump in with what I want to talk about, then yeah, we’re probably interrupting their play. But if I can sit down first and observe and kind of catch on to what’s going on here, then that information helps me to know is this a place for me to join this play conversation? Is this a place for me to continue to observe or is this a place for me to move on and join another place and in that observation, much like with our conversations with our friends, as we stand there, they may invite us to join. And the same thing may happen if we sit by children who are playing. They may invite us, they may start the conversation first. So it’s just that little bit of pausing before jumping in. That is often what defines the difference between interacting or interrupting.
16:26
The other thing that was an aha for me as I was teaching a group in my foundations class is that we often talk about Mildred Parton’s stages, social stages of play, right. That as we watch children and their social interactions within their play, that there are all these different types of play and I kind of have this aha moment that we as teachers, when we come to interact or observe that it can follow these same descriptors right. Especially, I think unoccupied is a little bit more challenging to define, but we can just observe. If we think of that as like observational right, we just observe. But that’s also fits under onlooker right. So solitary play I might sit down and play by myself at a center as an invitation right for children to come join me. So solitary play can be a way that we’re engaging and creating invitations, onlooker play for an adult in the room again is making those observations, watching, making note of what’s engaging to them, making note of whether I should enter the play or not, right. Then we have the parallel play, where I might sit down at the Play-Doh table and play with Play-Doh, right next to someone else who’s playing with Play-Doh, and we may or may not engage in conversation. I might just be a presence there playing with the Play-Doh, watching the different areas of the room, kind of in a parallel play situation engaging with children Associative play, of course and we start engaging with some of the different materials, sharing, becoming a little bit more active in their play, and cooperative play, where we see adults really in the mix with the play and that usually comes from an invitation.
17:57
When the children say, hey, could you do this, could you get this, would you help us with that? Or when they hit a roadblock and they’re trying to figure out ooh, how do we figure out how to share these materials as a cooperative player? The adult may introduce and start that problem-solving process, saying, well, sometimes we do it this way, some children find that this is helpful or by just helping them state the problem. I see that you want this and you want this. How could we figure out how to do that together and make it work for everyone? If you see yourself as a cooperative player in that role, rather than swooping in and taking over, I think it’s just this framework of social play and seeing myself as the play leader or a player in that environment. It just was a shift for me to see that my play as an adult can also fit into these different areas and can give me a little bit of guidance as to what that play can look like. All right, well, let’s jump in. I’ll try to keep my eye on people as they pop in, but I’m excited to hear your thoughts about the second section. So we’re talking about chapters four through seven.
19:07
I think of this as the why we play section. If I had divided into sections, this would be the why we play section. Whenever I talk about I have a presentation called why we play. I always say there are you could list so many more reasons for why we play. There are a lot of reasons, so I don’t by any means want to imply that these are the only reasons why we play or why those play matters, but I’d like to say that when I’m under pressure, I do so much better if I’ve already thought ahead about what I’m going to talk about. I just think that’s true for all of us, but I know that’s been my experience about. I just think that’s true for all of us, but I know that’s been my experience.
19:45
So when we are feeling like we’re put on the spot to explain why we’re playing, why it matters, how it’s going to help someone’s children, I believe it’s going to be so much easier and we’ll be able to advocate from a much more confident place if we already have thought through what it is we want to say. And so for me, for the longest time, I went to three like just my bedrock, three things that I would start with and then the conversation could move from there. But those three were mental health, brain development and learning and soft skill development. And, as you’ll notice and we’ll talk about, I’ve added a fourth that was kind of woven in there and I finally realized this has to be its own as well, and that’s because we’re human. The fourth reason is we play because we’re human and it’s wired into our development, and we’ll talk a little bit more about how.
20:33
I think it’s easy to take for granted how important that humanness is, how important it is, but also what an advantage it is. I think there are a lot of things that we try to do, thinking we’re getting ahead or being more advanced, and when we step back and look at the real science, we already are advanced and ahead, and childhood is already wired and designed to help us move in the most optimal way. And so some of these things that we think we’re doing to help children get ahead is sometimes working against the best thing for them, which is unfortunate, is sometimes working against the best thing for them, which is unfortunate. So let’s jump in with that first one, which is that we play for mental health and wellness, and I always say that this is the first one on my list and it’s the first one that I talk about, because I just feel like if we don’t get this right, nothing else matters. Right, if we do all the other things but we forget to support mental health and wellness, then it just won’t matter. I will often say that we don’t need any more brilliant psychopaths right, and it gets a little laugh from the crowd, right, but it’s actually a really tragic reality how often we have people who are brilliant. They’ve done all the checkbox accomplishment things, but they’re lacking in both the mental health and wellness and the soft skills that we’re going to get to in a moment, and the reality of that is really tragic, honestly. So that mental health piece is the most important and there are a lot of interesting pieces of research that talk about how play is connected to mental health and healthy development, mental development and growth One of the first places that I always pull from and I’m trying to remember if I actually mentioned it in here or not in the book. So let me know if I mentioned it in the book or not.
22:14
I know I talk about Dr Stuart Brown, but he actually started. He has a whole career focusing on studying play and amazing, amazing things from his research and he really looks at it through the human lifespan, not just children. But I always find it fascinating that his career began by studying mass murderers and that’s just not something that we would think would start a career studying play right, but that’s what he found so fascinating was that as he looked into what he called play histories for people who had become extremely violent and not just violent, but I hate to use the word broken too much. But I think that’s a place where we can say like mentally, socially, emotionally broken to commit such heinous. I mean, these were not crimes of passion or anything that you could draw any kind of a line between rational thought, it was pure cold mass murder. And he said that over and over. He kept seeing this pattern of people who had in their childhood had extreme play deprivation is what he called it and I think you can make the argument that that often goes hand in hand with other types of abuse and neglect. Right. But what fascinated him was this absence of play and what he knew about the brain and about brain development and began this question of what is it about play? That without it we just don’t develop properly and we become in some ways broken. And so it’s just from something so tragic and dark, blossomed with this beautiful career of just really digging into the research about what it is about play that is so tied to our humanness, so we’ll come full circle there. It makes us human and humane and really contributes to that mental health. So I wanted to ask you ooh, amber, I’m going to write that down for 69 when we get to soft skills With mental health and thinking about how play contributes to our mental health.
24:19
I want to hear from you what is your form of play that you feel like helps you to feel healthy, mentally, right? So what are the types of play? And you can unmute your mic and say it, you can drop it in the comments whatever you’re more comfortable with. How do you use play to help you stay mentally healthy? Um, so Christy says, listen to music, and I want, as you look at these, to recognize that they are so personal, right? So I’ll often say that one of the things that I’ve learned helps me say, stay mentally healthy is exercise, and so it might be running, it might be working out, and for somebody else you’re like no, thank you, that’s what breaks me. I don’t want to go running, that’s crazy. Um, but it’s individual. So we have gardening, puzzles and card games, crafting, dance and art, play-doh I agree, such a stress reliever. Baking and cooking, another runner going for a walk with a friend. So social aspect as well. Anytime we’re learning new skills, especially nature related, bird watching and beekeeping. I’ve never gotten into those, I mean a little, not.
25:22
I find birds interesting, but like the bird watching, I think it’s fascinating. Exercise class, beach time, art, baking, gardening, family time, game night, hiking, so all of these things, what we see in there, oh, attending sports events and antiquing. I saw several themes and add, if you see some other things here, one, like I mentioned, they’re individual, so it’s what feeds you and that might be the same as somebody else. So, like you mentioned, you might do it with friends, which is great. There’s a social aspect. Sometimes it’s a personal like, not social aspect. Right, I need me time all alone. We see this thread of learning new things or trying new things. Most of them are not like for a purpose, in the sense of like it’s your job. So people could do birdwatching as a job, but for the most part people who see it as play are like nobody’s paying me for finding the warbler right, but I find joy from it. So we see those two elements that we talked about before, the definition of play as being joy and agency. And Amber mentions it here that there are lots of things she finds as play. But it’s the agency, that sense of control of her time, her attention, that that’s the theme of all the different types of play. So let’s jump into chapter two, which is a little bit more on brain development and learning. They’re all interconnected, but I find that that’s the one that people most want to hear, when they’re saying well, are they actually learning anything? Okay, play is valuable, but why in school, before we go there? I just want to read this comment Tiffany says I found myself being a scaffold to their self-confidence.
26:59
Oh, I love that phrase. I’ve found myself being a scaffold to their self-confidence. Instead of saying I’m proud of you for, fill in the blank, saying to them you should be so proud of yourself. Ooh, I like that. They don’t always need to seek others’ approval in life. Ooh, tiffany, thank you for sharing that. I love both of those things. Scaffold to their self-confidence. And then, instead of saying, oh, I’m so proud, I think you’re amazing, saying wow, you must feel so proud. Wow, that’s amazing. You know how do you feel about that. That must make you feel really good.
27:32
I love that, that reminder that they don’t as much as they love our approval, and we want to show them that engagement, that we’re reminding them that it’s really how they feel, that matters, that they’re building their self-confidence, I love it matters. That they’re building their self-confidence, I love it. So, when we talk about learning and brain development, like I said, I think that’s one that we want to be really rooted in if we’re in a school setting, because oftentimes people will say, yeah, yeah, soft skills, mental health, whatever. Children need play. I agree, but that’s why we have recess.
28:00
Or I agree that’s why we have an afterschool program. But this is the classroom, this is where they need to learn, and so that’s where I want to dig in to how play is learning and how play supports the learning and the brain, growth and development. So there were some interesting pieces of research that I included in there, just some of the brain science that tells us not only that the brain is optimized to learn when it’s in a playful mode, a joyful mode and in discovery, curiosity mode, but that literally the brain chemistry changes so that, like Stuart Brown says, it’s fertilizer for the brain. And that’s not just this fun thing to say because it helps the brain grow, but literally the way that fertilizer is a chemical that helps plants to grow more optimally. That play and joy creates chemical change in our brain that literally helps the brain to grow more optimally, and that growth most of it happens in the prefrontal cortex. Or I should say, one of the places that they show that that chemical change promotes growth is the prefrontal cortex, which is this advanced area of the brain that isn’t fully developed until they’re into their 20s. It’s just fascinating to me that not only that the chemical secretions promote brain growth in the prefrontal cortex.
29:17
But as we get into this, the relationship aspect that we’ll come to when we talk about the human aspect, that in relationship and connection and they serve and return, that that’s also where we see the brain light up. That when children engage with adults who have a developed prefrontal cortex, that that prefrontal cortex lights up, gets more action going than we normally see. And so those two things together were really interesting to me. That that’s why we need play and that’s why we need caring adults, that it literally scaffolds, lights up and feeds the development of the prefrontal cortex. I mean, to me that’s that’s really thrilling.
29:52
That when we talk about being brain architects, it’s not a cute thing that we say we’re literally changing the growth and the shape and the development of the whole brain, but especially these advanced parts of the brain, the development of the whole brain but especially these advanced parts of the brain. Well, let’s jump into the soft skills. That was chapter six, and we’ll go back where Amber had mentioned, on page 69. And if you do have it handy, amber, do you want to read it, or I can scroll up and find exactly where this section was.
30:21 – Amber (Guest)
Sure, it’s page 69 in like the middle of the page. Sure, it’s page 69 in like the middle of the page. It says it seems that in a developmentally appropriate, play-based approach to early education, children have the opportunity to practice and build soft skills. In inappropriate environments, they’re punished for not already having them. To me that was like a major mic drop moment, because I’ve seen it in real life time and time again, and I find the irony in it is that so many people, when you talk about play-based learning to someone who doesn’t know play-based learning, their gut reaction, their instinct reaction, is like oh, the chaos, you know. Oh, my goodness, how are we going to manage them all?
31:09
And in my experience, I found year after year that play is truly the best form of classroom management, and I use that, you know, in air quotes. It’s a term we’re all familiar with, so we use it. I don’t really love. Well, anyway, I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty about it, but see where you’re going, though. Play is really the best form of classroom management, Like and. And for people to like judge play without trying it, it’s just like. I just want to put my palm to my head because it’s like yeah, can you just try? Can you try play-based learning, and then you’ll see for yourself. But anyway, I just thought that was a huge mic drop moment.
31:54 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Thank you. And that, I think, for me, was a big mind shift as well, to realize that number one, how important soft skills are. And we see a lot. I mean you can just Google soft skills and you’re going to find tons of things not just about children but adults. That when they talk to employers and business people and not that we want to ship children all the way to adulthood already, but they’re saying that’s, what’s missing in the people who are coming to them fresh out of college is the soft skills that they’re like they, they know the stuff it’s, can they work with other people, can they think creatively, can they problem solve, can they lead.
32:29
And so we know, first of all, how important those soft skills are, but, like you pointed out in that section, that we know they’re important, but do we teach them, do we make room for them, do we make space for them to grow, or do we just expect children to have them to just show up at three and four years old already having built these skills that we know adults don’t have yet. Right that there are lots of adults that don’t have these skills. And so just that mindset shift of it’s my job to support these skills, not to punish them for not having them when they showed up today, and so it’s part of that shift that says how do I make space for it, how do I support it? And play is the ideal way to do that to make space for them to collaborate and problem solve and think critically and talk to one another and work together. Um and so with that, though, it’s knowing that they don’t show up already knowing how to do it. This is the process where they’re learning it. So, just the same way that we don’t punish them because they showed up not knowing how to tie their shoes or read a book, we’re there to teach and help do that.
33:33
The same is true for these soft skills that we don’t just jump into punishing them and thinking less of them because they didn’t show up knowing how to work with other children, because they haven’t been around other children or many other children, especially our COVID babies, right, these are the things they’re behind on, are these soft skills? Because they were isolated so much of those early years for many of them. So it’s recognizing how important they are and recognizing that it’s our job to support them, not just say, well, you already failed at four for not having these skills yet, but how can I support those skills? I want to share a couple of these comments and I think they tie over to the last one. Meredith says we use the project approach with preschoolers and kindergartners and I daily see the blend of constrained and unconstrained skills because they’re deep into those projects. Right, and that’s where we start moving into these social skills, that those are so much of the unconstrained skills. Are these soft skills? And Stacey says play is the method and learning is the outcome.
34:29
And I tell people write it on your arm put it on the wall wherever you need.
34:33 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Just come back to that over and over, that we support these outcomes with play. It’s not either or. Our fourth one is we play because we’re human, and again, there’s a couple strands to that. One is just what we’ve been talking about that, like I say over and over, that all human development happens in the context of human relationships, and so so many of these things that we’re describing with soft skills, that practice happens because these children aren’t playing in isolation, they’re playing together, and so there are some of those soft skills they can get when they play in isolation at home or in an area of defers to them and for them to recognize in play with another three-year-old, another four-year-old. Now I have to collaborate in a different way. Now I need to problem solve in a different way. Or maybe now I’m the leader where I’ve always been the follower in my sibling group. So it’s just recognizing, first of all, that human development happens in human interactions, and that’s peer to peer and it’s adult to child as well. Um, and then there’s also what I discuss about, um, what we’ve learned about AI, and I just I found those quotes from, uh, dr Gopnik really fascinating. Um, recognizing it was just this aha to me, as she described here’s how AI learns. Ai learns in a rigid environment. They’re inside their system. It’s rigid, it’s still, it’s passive. They absorb the data. And then she describes well here’s how children learn. Children are active, inquisitive, they’re curious, they’re hands-on and they learn from each other, from other human beings. And where she makes that distinction, not only in her own work as a developmental psychologist, but in her work with AI developers who are saying help us learn from human children that she’s saying children are learning in a much more sophisticated way.
36:40
And to me it was just this aha, first of all, that those descriptors. And to me it was just this aha, first of all, that those descriptors they’re trying to get AI computer models to think more like children. They’re trying to get AI computer models to have more agency from each other, from humans, and not just from programs and passively absorbed data, but that they needed to be more active and curious. And just all of these words started to sound to me like an ideal environment for children. Right, but the irony to me was how many environments are we putting children in? Or how many curricula have been developed that look at children as though they are passive computers inside of a structure, passively absorbing data. And so this aha of you know why, in a time when we’re trying to get robots and computers to think more like children, are we still treating children like computers and robots? Why are we still creating environments that look like computers and what we know about computers and robots, when we have these developers trying to figure out how to create environments more like an ideal environment for children? And just how angry I would be if we gave computers that environment before we gave children that environment. Right, that that’s really a recipe for disaster. If we give, if we somehow let people figure out how to give computer programs an ideal environment and we still haven’t given it to our human children, that’s when we’re really going to suffer some serious consequences. So to me, it was this big aha that we play because we’re human. Children play because we’re human, we adults play because we’re human, and that it’s a defining characteristic to our development. But it’s also what makes us so superior, and I’d like to remind people that work with young children that this is your reminder that you are doing more advanced work than all the tech bros working on AI. They’re trying. They wish they could do the things that you’re doing with young children. They’re still trying to figure it out, so I hope that you see how important and how powerful that work is.
38:45
So we’re going to jump in and this final session we’re looking at chapters eight and nine. So eight looks more at play in early childhood education. So we make the case for play, but then there are still some who say, yeah, I understand that play matters, but do we need it in school? Right, and so we’ll talk a little bit about that. And then nine is really that closing argument that all children deserve play, and so it’s really an advocacy chapter. I feel it’s kind of where I put some of my bigger feelings in that final chapter. Maybe it was a little more bold in that chapter than maybe some others or other places that I’ve spoken.
39:26
So we’ll talk about those and any of your thoughts or pages or excerpts that you want to share or ask about, and then we’ll also do a Q&A at the end where you can ask about anything, anything in the book. So if it’s a previous chapter or something that’s still kind of been bouncing around in your brain, or even something that’s adjacent to, that’s not we haven’t talked about here and you want to bring it up here. We’ll just have open Q&A and you’re welcome to ask whatever you’d like. So if you have questions brewing and you want to type them in now, or if you know you’re going to need to leave partway through and you want to make sure your question gets answered, put it in there. We’ll try to scroll up and down in those comments, make sure we don’t miss anything. But you’re also welcome, when we get to those, to unmute yourself and ask your own questions and to answer other people’s questions. So feel free to participate. I love hearing from you.
40:15
So let’s jump in with that first section of the two. So the first chapter that we’re talking about today is actually chapter eight, is about play in early childhood education and that play not only is important for humans, important for children, important for development, but kind of bringing that together to say it’s not just extra, it’s not something else that we do, but that it actually belongs in quality education programs. So one of the main things that I lead off with that is that play is the method, learning is the outcome. That’s a phrase that I’ve been saying for years. I always make a really big point of it, just to get that language as much as anything.
40:58
I think a lot of early educators understand that they’re doing that, but when they’re put on the spot or when they’re asked about, well, I’m glad you, you have play, but when are you getting to the learning?
41:08
Or is this a learning preschool or is this a play preschool? Or just the different questions that were asked, the ways that were put on the spot, and so that’s just a phrase that’s been really helpful to me and that I’ve found is helpful to other people to be able to say these aren’t an either or this isn’t. We do one first and then we take a break with play. But that play is the method that I’m using. It brings in that intentionality right that I am choosing intentionally and in a way that is informing my practice that I’ve learned about and I’ve practiced and I’ve built these skills to use play as a tool in order to support learning and development, and so I’m curious some of your thoughts about that, or times that you’ve been put on the spot or had to make that explanation to other people that play is actually a tool that you use to help support learning and development.
42:00 – Linda (Guest)
I definitely could, if you don’t, if you don’t mind, Amanda. So I’m coming from maybe a different point of view because I’m an instructor, so, and I instruct educators who are currently employed in the sector. Those educators that haven’t yet had formal training or don’t yet have those words aren’t able to articulate their why they have the difficulty they don’t yet have that language to be able to talk to others. So I think when I hear you, I, you know it’s not because they’re in it every day, and it’s not that they don’t see the importance of play, that they don’t recognize it, that they don’t want to be able to articulate to parents or to others. You know, this is why we engage children in play. They know why they engage children in play. They know why they engage children in play but they’re, they’re stopped at being able to articulate that because they haven’t yet learned the words to bring out so that they can actually. They can actually I don’t know sell it.
43:21
Um, if that’s the, you know if that’s the best way to say it. Um, because parents can be. You know parents want what’s best for their children and you know the world society does say, you know like they need to have those. You know, they need to be schoolified. They need to have all those you know skills when they enter school. They need to have their abcs, their one, two, threes. They need to have all that, and so an educator does have to be able to, you know, have their language well prepared to be able to, you know, speak with confidence and and really be able to say, like this is why play is the way. And until they’ve had the opportunity to hear those words themselves, they aren’t able to be able to say those words.
44:12 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
So well put and that’s a lot of what I do and a lot of what I share. In my training. It was kind of an aha for me that in my trainings I was training educators to understand and use play, and it was this aha to realize that it wasn’t just understanding and use, it was also was this aha to realize that it wasn’t just understand and use, it was also articulate about to others that that was such a key piece and I think they are all self-reinforcing as we better understand it, we’re better able to articulate it, and as we’re better able to articulate it, we’re better able to practice it. Because just that process we’re helping ourselves to understand it and to know how to use it and to talk about it. All of those things I think are self-reinforcing. I think another thing that you hit on that I think is really interesting is you said sell it right, and I think you’re right and I think that’s something people feel uncomfortable with. I do think there is an element of marketing or understanding how marketing works that is helpful and I think people are uncomfortable because we don’t want to be exploiting children or childhood or any of those things, and I completely agree. But the reason we need to understand some basic principles of marketing really is that other things are being sold to parents and schools for children, that other things are being sold to parents and schools for children. They are using marketing to sell things that aren’t useful or helpful or the best option for our young children, and so some of these tools of learning to articulate in ways that connect with people better I mean that’s communication and marketing we need to be doing it because there are a lot of other things literally being sold to and for children that aren’t in their best interest, and if we have something that we know truly supports and helps young children, then we need to know how to. Like you said, we need to know how to sell it, even if we’re not selling it, but we need to know how to communicate it. We need to know how to use some of these basic principles that help us connect with people.
46:01
Sometimes I’m referred to as a play advocate and I absolutely understand that and I am an advocate for play, but I feel a little uncomfortable when I hear people introduce me that way because ultimately, I really want to be an advocate for children and because I’m an advocate for children, I support play because I know it’s the best way to support their learning and development. But sometimes when we become advocates for play first we start to moralize right that this is the better type of play, or that’s the better type of play, or I want to champion a specific ideal about play, and when I back up and say no, first I’m an advocate for children and because of that I support play. Then that lets me back up and just say what type of play does this child need right now? Because I’m an advocate for the child, not for my idea about what play should be or what it should look like, but for children. And so that was something. Again, like I said, it was one sentence, but it’s something I feel really strongly about that, as much as I do support play, I am an advocate for play. I really am an advocate for play because I’m an advocate for children and that allows me to then say play can and should shift and look different in different scenarios in order to meet the needs of children, because that’s my first priority.
47:20
Janelle shared page 87. Let’s take a look at that one. So that’s in Chapter 8, eight and it’s the whole last paragraph. Okay, so talking about that spectrum. Thank you for sharing that. I just love having you help.
47:34
So it says again we see that the spectrum of playful learning introduced in chapter three. So I’m describing that shift, that it can and should shift, and here’s what it can look like, and just saying that is what we see in chapter three there is a full range or what they say, quote a vast pedagogical space between free play and direct instruction. Within this range there is room for responsive support and guidance. This balance of allowing children to discover and shifting our guidance to support them through the process is a critical aspect of effective early education. This is why and this is the part that you started this is why early education can’t be scripted or replaced by videos, computer programs or even AI. It requires us to be present, observant and adaptable, responding to the cues children give us through their play.
48:22
Despite the many misconceptions, powerful play isn’t an unstructured free-for-all, nor is it rigid, predetermined lessons. Instead, it’s about finding the blend of child-driven exploration and thoughtful adult guidance, and that’s the balance that is so important and also so tricky, because I can’t just prescribe to you and say here’s what it should look like. Here’s the perfect way to support play. Here’s my Pinterest version of what your play area should look like or what their interactions should look like, because it has to be responsive. And the metaphor that I use there is that of the swing right, that it’s free, it’s exhilarating, but it only works when it has the right amount of support and guidance.
49:05
And I think I was just thinking right now, as I think about that responsive nature, that we have to be responsive in that back and forth, that I need to read their cues in order to support them appropriately. I was just now reminded of an experience where I was pushing a child on the swing, a preschooler and I was just pushing on there, having a great time and I’m kind of zoning out a little bit, and I started pushing really hard, like it started to turn into like a workout right, where I’m like full extension, push, full extension, push, and eventually this child is like um, it’s a little too high right now, like back off a little bit, and so I think of that in that responsive nature, right, that my mechanics I think I just kind of my brain started to go to like body mechanics and it was just like full extension is your best, it’s the best way to do this movement right, but it wasn’t the best experience for that child because I had stopped paying attention to the child. I started thinking about my performance, the best way to do this movement, but what the child needed for was for me to back up a little bit and just do not the best ideal movement. So there’s that responsive nature that is is just essential. So again, it’s something I feel really strongly about that we have to back away from this idea of like this conceptualized, idealized, moralized version of play and back up and say, well, actually I’m advocating for children, actually I’m serving and supporting children. I use play as a tool, again, a method, to do that. But in order for that to work effectively, it has to be responsive to the children. Janelle says even in truly free play with no adults and just children, they are guiding one another and learning how to work and play together. I love that as well, that in social play they are reading each other’s cues and being responsive.
50:51
Oftentimes when we step in to support kind of a social rupture, it’s because they’re having a hard time with each other’s guidance and support right, that they’re not reading each other’s cues, they’re not being responsive with each other. That’s often why we have to step in to support them, and so, if we think of that from ourselves as well, if we’re not being responsive, we’re not reading their cues, then we’re going to have a rupture as well. We need that support for each other and for this to be effective. It’s why we can’t script it out, it can’t be prescriptive, it can’t be done by computers and AI, because it has to be responsive and built in those human relationships. But, as we talked about that play as an element of education, not just of development, which is important, but that our education environment should have it.
51:42
The word that often comes up is rigor, and that’s something I feel really strongly about and I wrote about that in page, on page 98, um, because I would hear that word thrown around or I would hear people say, um, you know, yeah, play is nice, but, um, we don’t have it in our program because this is a rigorous program, right, we don’t have time for it in our program. Children get it after school. Here we focus on rigor, rigorous thing, right? Or you just hear it thrown around all the time. On page 98, this is, I feel really strongly, another one. I feel strongly about that. We use this phrase rigor and we’re not even using it, right, I think. I think we’re kind of using it to get away with things that some of us feel like we want. I’m not saying we, because there’s no one here, but that some people will say well, the children need rigor, it helps them get ahead. We want it to be more stringent, and it always kind of ruffles my feathers because I’m like that’s not even what rigor means. Rigor does not mean flashcards and worksheets, like you think it does, and I feel like people kind of pull out that word to defend practice that isn’t effective for young children. Therefore, it’s not really rigorous, right? So here’s what I wrote Too often, rigor has come to mean less instead of more.
52:56
Less play, less art, less social interaction, all in the name of having more quote unquote rigor. But a rigorous, thorough early childhood education addresses the needs of the whole child. It applies concepts and discoveries to many different areas and forms. A thorough education allows children time and space to wonder and be curious and to sink into the process of actively questioning and exploring and creating understanding together. True academic rigor isn’t about stripping away joy, agency and exploration. It’s about embracing them as the foundation of deep learning, and so that’s one of those places where, like I said before that some people would just say, well, we shouldn’t be talking about academic rigor, it doesn’t matter right now, and I see where they’re coming from.
53:43
But for me, I felt like, okay, if I hear this word all the time, instead of just arguing and saying that doesn’t matter, we don’t want academic rigor, we want something else. I felt like I needed to say, okay, then let’s look at the word that you want to use. Let’s come to the same place, and when I looked up rigor the thing I usually come to and I think I write about it in the chat or the paragraph above what I read is that there are a lot of definitions If you look up the word rigor. One of those is connected to rigor mortis right, that when someone dies, there’s rigor mortis that they stiffen. That’s not. I feel like that’s what you’re describing with worksheets and flashcards that oftentimes, when people say we want more rigor, they think, well, that’s not the rigor that you want. You don’t want rigor mortis where they’re frozen and don’t move and they aren’t active.
54:31
But another definition of rigor that I think applies to education is thorough, it’s deep, and so what I described in that paragraph was if we want early education that is thorough and deep, then it is going to use play, because here’s what play does. And so that’s again kind of circling back to where we started is. I feel like we have to use the same language even if we don’t like the language. So I didn’t like how I was hearing rigor used all the time. Then I needed to back up and say, okay, I see that you value rigor. Then let’s talk about what rigor means. Rigor means thorough and deep. Now let me show you how play is thorough and deep and really creates the foundation that allows children to sink into concepts Like I talked about with the triangle.
55:17
That’s a more rigorous understanding. When they played with it, they understood it more thoroughly, more deeply. They couldn’t be thrown off by just it wasn’t a superficial understanding. That would be the opposite, right? So flashcards and worksheets tend to lead to a superficial understanding. That’s not rigorous. Play is rigorous because it’s thorough and deep. So sometimes we have to attack these words that we don’t like. Come at it in a way that says, okay, let’s both use the same words, but let’s talk about what it actually means and then connect that to how play really does that. So instead of just saying I don’t want to talk about academic rigor, I would say, well, academic rigor means a thorough understanding and here’s how play helps them do that.
55:57
Well, the last thing that I want to hit on in that chapter nine, like I said, really brings it back full circle then to essentially say, if the whole book lays out this case for play and how it drives development and why it’s important in our education system, then the last chapter is you know, therefore, let’s go do it right the rally cry for supporting young children through play. But especially with a twist of that, it is for all of our children. So, like I said, on page 106, it says so basically, given all this research we’ve talked about. So for which children should we prioritize play? With all the research and all the data right in front of us, who would we decide? Are the other children that this information doesn’t actually apply to? There are no other kids in this scenario.
56:44
This book is about all children. All children need play, all children benefit from play, all children deserve play. And so much of that came from so many things that I was seeing and conversations I was having and Dr Farhan’s research, essentially saying wait a minute. We talk about play and how important it is and how wonderful it is, and when we look in the research, there are programs that are doing a beautiful job of supporting it. And guess who is more likely to access those programs? Our affluent children, who are already doing really well.
57:17
And for some reason, we have this shift here where we think that some children aren’t ready for play, like they haven’t earned it somehow, that we need to help them catch up, that these children need flashcards and worksheets, even though what the data tells us is that that’s putting them further behind because they aren’t getting the rich experiences of play. And so my argument is, if we see all of these amazing outcomes at play, what it drives, what it does, who wouldn’t we want that for? Who doesn’t need that? And that the children who need it the most oftentimes are the children who are the least likely to get that from their education environment. In particular, given the experience with COVID and the COVID lockdowns, that was another place where I thought okay, so if we’re seeing lower quality programs given to our at-risk children because of this divide, right, that those children need rigor, that looks frozen, that we’re serving them in the worst way possible, that that’s already established. We’ve seen it in some of the research that that’s what’s happening and we need to shift that. So when you take that concern and then look at what’s happened since COVID, that now there’s this perspective that just basically all children are behind, my concern is that then we excuse this bad programming for all children because they all need to catch up right. And so again, backing up to that argument that, okay, if I accept this thing that bothers me, if I accept your concern that all the children are behind because of the COVID lockdown and we’ve got data of how grades have fallen and test scores have fallen, and I can see it and I know that’s a concern, and I can acknowledge the concern other people have, and then say, if that’s the concern, then I’m with you, let’s do this right.
59:07
If that’s the concern, the five-year-olds that I teach were babies during COVID. So what is it they’re behind on? They’re behind on social interactions. If we’re going to say behind, right, then they missed out on more social interactions. They missed out on more social interactions. They missed out on more play interactions. They missed out on more hands-on things in the world that wouldn’t let us touch anything.
59:31
And so again, it’s taking what bothers me and reframing it so we can talk about it instead of just being offended by it and say I see that you’re concerned about children being behind because of COVID, so let’s talk about what that actually means for our youngest learners. It means they missed out on play, social interactions and active hands-on experiences. So we need more play. That’s how we’re going to help them catch up, so to speak. And when we step back and realize that what’s going to serve our children best is this play-based practices that those will shift to meet their needs of where they are. So maybe it does look different with a child who hasn’t built some of those skills.
01:00:08
I’m going to have different interactions with them, or I might present them with different invitations, but I’m going to support them in that same playful manner, because I know that works better and that it builds the full picture of the skills, the whole iceberg right, rather than just sit over here and drill until you’re prepared to go play with the other children who are building skills faster than you are because they’re in a better environment. That we really owe it to all children to give them the best practices, the best environments, the best opportunities, that they’re counting on us to do that, and we owe it to them to make sure that we have that for them. And so it’s really just closing out that chapter with recognizing that play is a priority. It can’t just be something that, yeah, that’s nice and we do it at recess, but it’s a priority for these young children in particular that we make it a part of our practice, a part of our program, a part of our environment, so that we can support them in the best way possible, and that it is for all children, not just some of them. It’s not just cute, it’s not just nice, it’s really essential.
01:01:07
Appreciate all of you doing the work that you do and helping to make this book what it is, because it’s conversations with so many of you or trainings and time spent with so many of you that really formed what this was. And so, not only supporting the book as it’s come out, but really building what this book is and the voice that it has has come so much from you and the experiences, the questions, the things that you’ve shared that have helped me to understand, maybe, how we can help others to understand and value play. But I so appreciate you being here today through the other sessions, watching it as a replay. It means a lot to me to know that what I’ve put out into the world resonates with you and informs your practice in some way that helps you to do this work that you’re doing. That is really amazing, that I feel so strongly really shapes lives and shapes our future as a society. So I just want you to know how much I value you and the work that you’re doing, that, whether or not you’re hearing it from anyone else, I want you to know that what you do really matters. It literally changes our future, and so I’m so grateful for what you do and I’m just honored to be able to be a small sliver, a piece of that work that you’re doing all throughout the world. So thank you for bringing me along to work those miracles that you’re working every single day.
01:02:28
Thanks again for listening to Not Just Cute the podcast. You can find show notes at notjustcutecom forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 81. There you’ll find links to my book as well as other tidbits I know you’ll love. You can also hit up the show notes for a link to the additional book resources I mentioned earlier. So head there or go directly to notjustcutecom forward slash book to get signed up for your free study guides. I’m Amanda Morgan. You can read more on my blog and sign up for the Not Just Cute newsletter at notjustcutecom. And sign up for the Not Just Cute newsletter at notjustcutecom. You can also stay tuned for social media updates on Instagram by following me at Amanda underscore notjustcute. Thanks for listening today and, as always, thank you for standing up for children and for childhood.
